ABSTRACT
According to an academic rumour in Finland, one cannot be taken seriously as a music scholar in the country unless one engages in the life and works of Johan Christian Julius (a.k.a. Jean) Sibelius, the alleged national composer of the country and whose birthday is an official flag-flying day and celebrated as the Day of Finnish Music. In the Western cultural sphere, the heightened importance of musical individualism is apparent in the form of three characters in particular: stars, virtuosos and geniuses. It is common to encounter claims where an individual’s musical stardom or ingenuity is associated with or even explained by authenticity, whether in the guise of credibility, innocence, originality, obduracy, communality or anything else that serves the purpose. A context of primary importance for discussing authenticity in the societal conditions of global postcoloniality is the national, not least due to its status as the prevalent ideological framework for the world as a whole.
